This is really staggeringly good news. Malaria has, through history, been one of the deadliest infectious diseases (though of late my understanding is that it has been surpassed by HIV). One of the problems with malaria is that for every death, many more are rendered unable to work for long periods of time, a drag on productivity in economies that already have trouble producing sufficient food and other goods.

Hal_10000:

One reason, other than their usual pathological resistance to reporting good news: part of the credit goes to Bush's Malaria Initiative. They spent so much time making him out to be a monster, rather than just a bad President, that it's hard to acknowledge that he did a good thing.

Q46:

Zachriel:

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants banned DDT for agriculture, but not for vector control. One problem was that widespread agricultural use of DDT led to the evolution of DDT-resistant vectors. Use of DDT is still restricted.